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In Part II, I explained a bit about the social and spatial legislation that laid the foundation for the development of apartheid sport.  But to begin to understand the current state of South African sport and what this World Cup means in historical context, you need to understand South Africa’s unique sporting landscape.

South Africans are sports mad.  The madness is more than a passion, it is religion.  However, observing South African sport from the viewpoint of major South African newspapers during apartheid skews one’s perspective on South African sport.  Before South Africa was awarded the 2010 World Cup, South African soccer, which was a predominately a black sport, was largely invisible to most outside of South Africa.  To most of the outside world, rugby, and to a lesser extent cricket, were the quintessential South African sports.  Internally, stories and scores from these sports frequently rivaled political news for headlines.  This reality allowed rugby and cricket to thrive inside South Africa, while support for black leagues, players, and competitions suffered behind closed doors. 

New Age was one of the few newspapers that paid attention to the slighted world of black sport.  Its writers during the 50s and 60s included activist Ruth First, politician Govan Mbeki (father of Former South African President Thabo Mbeki), novelist Alex La Guma, and Chief Albert Luthuili, President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1952 to 1967.  As one of the few voices from the black sporting world, New Age succeeded in keeping black sport alive during a period of intense suppression.

The apartheid government labeled New Age an outlet for black grievances, frequently pressuring the paper to shut down.  In its twenty-six years of existence, the New Age was published under seven different titles, in part because it was banned so many times.  Virtually all of the contributing writers were banned, jailed, or exiled from South Africa.

One of the paper’s many highlights was its coverage of the South African Soccer League (SASL), the first non-racial soccer league in South Africa.  During the league’s existence from 1961 to 1965, SASL was routinely ignored by major South African newspapers, The Johannesburg Star and The Cape Argus. These publications routinely had large articles on comparatively obscure sports such as men’s hockey, horse racing, and South African baseball.  Seriously, South African baseball.  The fact that the Argus regularly covered English, Italian, Spanish, and even Australian soccer showed there was an interest in soccer, but only in leagues where whites were the majority.

Even though the majority of South Africans are black and play football, the disproportionate allocation of resources into athletic facilities and player development for rugby ensured that under the apartheid government, rugby became South Africa’s national sport even though it wasn’t the favorite sport of the majority of the people.  Rugby became a medium for Afrikaners to display their dominance and superiority.  So for black South Africans (and notably a significant number of white South Africans), challenging rugby became a way to challenge apartheid.  But beyond simply challenging the system, black South African athletes were also fighting for exposure to the outside world.

This summer South Africa and South African football will be fully exposed.  South African soccer will officially leave obscurity and step on to the world football’s largest stage.

South African soccer is still far behind South Africa’s storied rugby and cricket sides.  But soccer is getting proper investment these days.  It’s only a matter of time before South Africa can field a soccer team to match its already world-class rugby and cricket sides.

That’s a wrap for now.  In the next part, I’ll explain a bit more about soccer’s road from obscurity to  full-exposure.

The South Africa Series:  Part  I |  II |  ..  |  IV